The Same Old is Everything

I sat on the kitchen counter waiting for Nora's supper to cool enough to call her in, and I was looking out the window at the space and the orchard and the order.  All day today, it was hard not to look at the smallest things I did and know that there are families all over the nation right now who can't hang their clothes on the line, pull frozen tomatoes from the freezer, swing in a hammock or check the trees for signs of fruit, stare over fields turning green, scrub the toilet, do the dishes.  We all need a haven and the anchor of simple, reliable chores to put our hand into the design of order already made for us.  And when this disorder uproots us--cars sitting on buildings, fields underwater, trees stripped of leaves and bark standing like upright bones in the ground--it's hard to imagine and I cling to monotony because it is so good and a blessing.  Lord, be with them.